Trips to the Moon: Cremation and Energy Use in the United States

Ever wonder how far you could travel on the energy used in one year to cremate people in the United States? Probably not, but it’s surprising.

To give us some gauge of mileage, let’s imagine we have a car that gets 30 mpg. And for perspective on the distance, we’ll speak in terms of trips to the moon. After crunching the numbers and triple checking our work, the answer is — hold on to your hats — over 1,972 round trips to the moon.

As they say, your mileage may vary, but here’s how we did the science based on what we believe are very reasonable assumptions.

The quantity of energy used to cremate people is expressed in units of therms and can range from about 12 therms to 50 therms per cremation. Our assumed average for this calculation is 25 therms, based upon information from Steve Talley of Matthews Cremation in Apokpa, FL.

Considering that the oomph of one gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 1.24 therms, we can begin to visualize the magnitude of the energy expended for the 1,570,161 cremations in the U.S. for the year 2019. The 25 therms of energy per cremation corresponds to the energy contained in about 20 gallons of gasoline. Multiplying by the 1,570,161 cremations gives us a whole lot of gas to drive our car — 31,403,220 gallons. Traveling 30 miles for each gallon, we’d be way over warranty at 942,096,600 miles.

Putting this into perspective, with the moon a mere 238,855 miles away, we could have journeyed over 3,944 times that distance, making the round trip to the moon 1,972 times that year! That’s well over five round trips every single day for the entire year.

Cremations consume an incredible amount of energy. I’d rather return to the Earth just once.

- Courtesy of Mary Woodsen, former Greensprings Board President and member of Greensprings Ecological Advisory Committee and Henry Fitzgerald who's extremely careful about getting the math right, he used only the most recent stats (2019) available.